How Taking Up Kitesurfing at 52 Helped This Woman Heal From Childhood Abuse

Glamour has partnered with The Center for Investigative Reporting and Glassbreaker Films on a series of short films that feature portraits of a diverse, powerful group of women who are making waves and confronting the status quo. The stories cover a range of distinctive figures—from a police officer fighting racism from within her department to a politician being touted as the next Democratic nominee for president of the United States—all directed by women. See all the films here.

Mikaya Heart was 52 when she took up kitesurfing. “Sometimes people look at me and they just see a little old lady,” Heart, now 65, says in this short film by Aubrey Aden-Buie. “Then I go out there on the water and this is obviously not the way little old ladies behave.”

Kitesurfing has become an obsession for Heart over the past decade, traveling the world where the wind takes her. It’s a sport still heavily dominated by men (only about 10 percent of riders are women), and she says she’s treated at times like a novelty by other surfers.

“I jump a lot. I can jump pretty high,” she says. “When I come back to shore, people speak to me in hushed tones.”

Heart, who was the victim of abuse as a child, says kitesurfing has also helped her heal. “I chose to express my trauma as anger,” she says of her past. “At some point in your life you do have the choice to face that and come through it.”

What would happen, Heart wondered, if she stopped retreating from herself and putting the needs of others in front of her own. “I went and bought a kite without really knowing more about it,” she says. “I wanted to know who I was when I was just being me.”

This solitary sport, she says, has only allowed her to better connect to the world around her. “I would say in terms of changing the world for the better, it’s the most useful thing I do because it brings me to such a place of joy,” Heart says. “And that’s infectious.”